A Programme for Women's Sunday: 1908

Full image caption

This is a programme from the Women's Sunday demonstration, organised by the Women's Social and Political Union, in Hyde Park on 21 June 1908. The meeting was promoted in the suffragette newspaper 'Votes for Women' as a 'monster meeting'. Trains were specially chartered to bring in thousands of suffragettes from all over Britain. Frederick Pethick-Lawerence, the paper's co-editor, persuaded the authorities to remove a quarter of a mile of park railings to accommodate the seven processions - accompanied by 30 bands - that gathered in Hyde Park from seven directions around London. Crowds gathered to watch different groups of suffragettes parade 700 handmade banners and to hear 80 women give speeches from temporary platforms around the park.